Saw it, disliked it. To me its not appreciably better than the prequels, it just fails for entirely different reasons. If nothing else, it proves to me that JJ Abrams is an over-hyped moppet without any sense as a storyteller. Here he doesn't have the excuse that was trotted out for the Star Trek films that he'd rather be doing Star Wars.
Plot? What plot?
Things just happen. There isn't a plot, just a series of random events that are roughly connected by having the same people be involved. Character motivations are either non-sensical, spurious or entirely driven by 'plot demands'. What is Kylo Ren's motivation? Well, the movie needs a bad guy. Why do Finn and Rey like each other? Well, the movie needs them to want to be buddies. Why does Han Solo show up when he does? Because... we paid Harrison Ford a lot of money to be in this film, damnit.
Oh look: The bad guys have a giant planet destroying super weapon which they fire at a populated world.
No literally, that just happens. Billions dead with no build up, no foreshadowing, and really no reason at all except to demonstrate that, yes, the Empire blows up worlds for fun.
The most offensive example may be the very first, and perhaps the subtlest. Leaving aside Poe, the movie opens with Finn the stormtrooper. Despite a lifetime of indoctrination and training he suddenly decides he doesn't want to be a Stormtrooper anymore. There is a moment when a fellow stormtrooper has just been shot in front of him (by Poe, in fact), where the camera gets all over cranked, and we can feel his sudden awareness of how fucked up his life is. He refuses to shoot the villagers, Kylo Ren takes particular notice of him and he does the unthinkable. He rebels.
Then they talk about an awakening in the Force.
Who awakened?
Why... Rey, the girl who hasn't done a god damn thing different from any other day, that's who.
This isn't just events happening for no reason, this is events happening against every grain of the plot thus far, in defiance of all coherence and plot.
Never mind that as the movie goes on Finn increasingly goes from a trained Stormtrooper to a hapless bumbling idiot, only as important to the "plot" as the Bothan Spies from A New Hope. You know: The ones only mentioned once or twice and never seen.
I had a hope the movie might have redeemed itself slightly when Finn takes up the lightsaber to fight Kylo Ren. Given that Rey had been given every single heroic trait denied Finn throughout the movie, I thought dividing up the usual skills of the jedi (sword fighting and magic fu) between the two characters would be an interesting twist. But no... Finn is a plucky comic relief sidekick given major protagonist screen time.
I could make a snarky remark about the progressive stack here, but frankly I'm more interested in just how irritating the movie got as it wore on than I am about identity politics.
Its a bad thing when Micheal Fucking Bay is better about setting up major plot points and giving his characters 'things to do'.
That aside I do wish Abrams made up his mind if he wanted to slavishly follow the tropes and traditions of A New Hope or to subvert them. The constant waffling between homage and near-satire was jarring. What am I talking about? In the shortest of shorthands: Kylo Ren and his On-Again, Off-Again Darth Vader helmet. Also: How fucking heavy is that damn thing? Is there any room inside it for his glorious locks of sable hair, much less his actual head?
Anyway, as I've decided to keep this non-spoilerific, there ya go.
Final Summation: its a more enjoyable miserable failure of a movie than A Phantom Menace, but its much less deep than Revenge of the Sith. It is much better acted for the MOST part, but utterly incoherent.
PS: Also:
"Hey, we need to go capture a beach ball droid. Should we send in some stormtroopers?"
"Nah. Just send in the Tie Fighters. They look cooler."